Did you know that UKFSSART has its first Search and Rescue Dog called MAX ?

Max and his handler Keith Hampton are from the Leicester Team and are available for international deployment. Here is some background to the partnership and how you can get them along to train with your team.

Keith is a Sub Officer at Central Station in Leicester, with 22 years in the job, he has been an UKFSSART team member from its conception, ten years ago and is now a Team Leader. He is a specialist in Water Rescue being the first Swift Water Rescue Instructor in the UK Fire services, 6 years ago. He has run White Water Safety and Rescue courses in the UK and abroad for the last twenty years. He has in excess of twenty years experience paddling, climbing and travelling around the world with some challenging descents and ascents under his belt. He also holds many of the higher level qualifications in the outdoors, climbing, mountaineering, canoeing etc.

At present he is writing the chapter on Safety and Group Leadership for the BCU handbook. He has worked with Mountain Rescue Teams around the world and five years ago took on a dog, specifically for the Leicester UKFSSART team.

The site editor recently interviewed Keith (and Max) for the web site and the resulting article, which gives an invaluable insight into the work required to train a search dog up to the required standard for international search and rescue duties, can be found below.

Interview with Keith Hampton

Why did you take on a SAR Dog?

Having seen the SARDA dogs work in the mountains, I was fascinated by their efficiency in the search stage of a rescue and when I saw them work here and in the United States, I was totally knocked out, so I decided to find out more. Getting into the search dog world can sometimes be difficult unless you know the right person or have a background in working with dogs. I was fortunate enough to find a guy by the name of Andy Collue in Yorkshire, who was very helpful in finding Max and putting me on the right road with his training.

Tell us about MAX.

Max is a Border Collie, five years of age and was bred from two other working Search & Rescue dogs. He is strong dog, very agile and seems to cope extremely well with all the excitement surrounding a rescue incident, not much phases him. He can work all the different types of terrain you would expect to find in collapsed buildings, rapid surface work, a slower mode for deeper locations and tight tunnels and voids. His fitness is good because we have to maintain an open area search capability for urban search work in the brigade. We have done avalanche work where he was very good and have even worked from a boat for water search, but I don't consider that a crucial part of his capability at this stage.

Has it been hard training a dog?

Yes, as I said earlier, these are no easy routes into this field. You can't go out, read a book and expect to be able to train a dog. You need to work with someone who knows the score. Max and I worked with K9 and Andy Collue in the early days, then BIRD. They were able to offer a bigger support role and more training opportunities, that's where I met Phil Haige. The period with BIRD was very useful as at the time there were some experienced handlers around in the team. BIRD had some internal troubles so Max and I left to concentrate on our own agenda for UKFSSART.

I have a lot of respect for Phil and think he has done a good job with Canis and look forward to working with him again. More recently I have worked with Chris Pritchard and his two dogs, which has been a useful training partnership for both of us. It essential that you train with other good handlers and Chris is very committed to SAR Dogs and is a very knowledgeable trainer and handler.

I have also had a lot of help from the Leicestershire Police dog section and some of their handlers who have helped with widening my views and encouraging a more professional approach in training schedules, grading dogs and the technical aspects of the handler.

Not being associated with a dog team made grading Max difficult because you need a minimum of four dogs for a grading. In the UK we are tend to use the IRO standards which are a very basic. This level of work was seen by many of the professional handlers in the police and military as a minimum standard, and view grading as a regular ongoing assessment of the dog, reviewed annually by an independent assessor. I feel very confident with the standards that I have set Max, not just in search work but also on the obedience and agility side.

How does he work and what sort of areas can he work in?

Max uses air scent from live casualties by working across the scent cone or trail which is carried in the air movements, in, on or around the building, structure or collapse. I will usually send him initially on a quick surface search, where shallow locations can be located quickly. I would then work the site at a slower, more methodical pace working smaller areas, voids etc. We have used him in tunnel environments where we were able to follow the scent in the rubble, making the direction more accurate.

The whole thing is about reading the structure, environment and circumstances and hopefully giving the rescue team a few more clues in the location of the casualty. At the end of the day, dogs are just another tool that is there to be utilised. When Max indicates on a scent he remains in place and barks. Praise for a positive indication is the usual squeaky toy or ball.

Can he locate dead bodies?

I have concentrated on live casualties as I feel that multi tasking and different indications can sometimes lead to confusion for the dog. I have seen lots of dog loose their reliability from multi functional roles, even in the hands of experienced professional handlers. This is my first dog so I feel I need to concentrate on what we do best and consistently and that's indicate on live casualties 100%.

I understand Max was deployed to India.

We were mobilised for India, but literally two minutes before the plane took off, I still did not have assurance that UKFSSART and Max was going to get into India. It was felt that the chances of being allowed in were pretty slim as anyone at Brize Norton will tell you. Having to put Max through quarantine for six months for potentially 24hrs in Bahrain was just not worth the gamble.

I took him off the plane but Kal Dyar my 'kennel maid' and I still had to go. Max was looked after at Brize Norton by the RAF and then collected later by the Brigade. He spent the rest of the day in our control centre being spoilt rotten. When we got the message an hour into the flight that we were going to be allowed to enter India, it was one of the worst feelings of my life. All that time, effort and training and then to have had to leave him at home, really hurt. We could have done so much more with him there in those first few days.

Kal and I linked up with GMC and forged an excellent working relationship and within a few hours of arriving in Bhuj we found ourselves immersed in a dramatic live rescue of a mother and her 7-year-old son. That helped me a lot as I felt useful again and just got on with being a team member and doing what we were trained to in the first place. At least we are ready and available for the next one, heaven forbid, but given the same circumstances again in the future, I would make the same decision again, the dog's welfare has to come first.

What do you see as the future of dogs in the UKFSSART ?

I have been asked to put together a feasibility report for UKFSSART to have its own dog section. This type of report has been done before, but not by someone who went out and made it work for a team. Since then UKFSSART has evolved considerably and circumstances have changed. The aim would be a team working in parallel to Canis and other dog teams but would be better geographically spread for rota groups. This would make local deployment and training easier.

Although most of the teams and their members have seen dogs work, when Max and I were asked to do a talk and demo at Fort Widley and then partake in the overnight exercise, for many, that was the first time they knew we existed. We have never really promoted ourselves before as we were happy in our role within the Leicester Team.

But since Widely and India there has been a lot of interest in UKFSSRT owning its own dogs, and if teams want Max and I to come along to train with them or if they want advice about starting a dog section then just e-mail me on: keith.angie@ntlworld.com